Red Queen (19 page)

(and the goblin)

—were waiting. Alice knew that surprise was not on her side. The White Queen had killed Pen, and she surely knew that Alice was not a child from the village.

So why,
Alice thought as she stepped inside the tree,
does she not simply crush my heart as she did Pen's? Is it because her goblin wants me and she indulges him, or is it because she can't hurt me without a connection, like she had with the giants?

There was so much Alice did not understand, and truthfully, she did not really wish to understand it. She only wished to finish what she must finish so she could go home. It had been a very long time since she'd had a home.

Your power would be wasted in a little cottage,
Cheshire said.
And what would you do with your pet murderer? Tame him and make him play husband and father to a litter of little Alices?

“That's enough, Cheshire,” Alice said, and the voice quieted.

She did not know for certain if Cheshire could actually hear her thoughts or if the voice in her head was just her imagination. It would make a strange kind of sense that she had a bossy voice that pretended to be Cheshire.

He could see her actions, that seemed certain, and there was still some kind of connection between them, though Alice had thought she'd broken it. He still wanted something from her. Alice, however, had quite enough to get on with. She didn't need Cheshire hounding her.

The doors closed behind her, swiftly and silently, and the tunnel was very dark. Alice reflected for a moment that perhaps
it would be better to stay in the dark, for then she would not be so conscious of the ceiling looming just above her head and the walls squeezing in on her.

Then she thought that darkness was a good place for a goblin to lurk. There was an itching between her shoulder blades, that horrid feeling of someone sneaking up behind whether they were actually there or not.

She needed a light, and of course now that she wished for some help from Cheshire, he had gone away—

(
sent away by you,
she thought in her own annoyed voice)

—for she had no notion of how to make a light out of magic.

“Stop thinking about it,” Alice said. Her voice echoed weirdly in the tunnel, so that it sounded like she was whispering in her own ear. “You made the firewood out of the ashes, didn't you?”

That was different. You were only changing something back to its original shape.

She shuffled forward, tapping her hands on the side of the tunnel. “Don't be afraid, Alice. If you're not going to try magic, then you must not be afraid.”

But she was afraid, and her shoulders itched, and she felt that any moment something would loom out of the darkness and lunge at her. She stopped walking, and sighed.

I wish for some light,
she thought, squeezing her eyes shut very tight like a little girl wishing on her birthday candle.

I don't think you're trying very hard,
Cheshire said.

Of course I am trying,
Alice snapped back.
Do you really think I wish to walk about blind in this horrid tunnel?

You must, because you aren't trying. And it's not nearly so horrid as it will be, yet.

Alice opened her eyes. The shadows seemed to move ahead of her, to make monster shapes that had not been there before. She wished she could pull the covers over her head as she had when she was small and the shadows had made monsters and tried to come for her in the night.

“That's quite enough of this nonsense, Alice,” she said. “Either you are a Magician or you are not. If you are and you don't wish to walk in the dark, then make some light.”

And just like that Alice understood that magic wasn't about wishing, but about her will. The tunnel glowed softly as a line of torches set in the wall lit with fire, one after another.

Much more satisfactory,
Cheshire said, and Alice's voice said it too, so that she really
wasn't
certain if Cheshire was in her head or if it was just the part of her that got impatient with her dithering.

Now that the tunnel was lit, Alice could see that the floor was paved with smooth stones joined together. The walls were rough, like the bark of a tree, and there appeared to be nothing ahead save more tunnel.

Alice thought of Cheshire's maze and the passage that connected the Caterpillar's lair with the Rabbit's and the Walrus'. Finally she remembered the long walk from under the City until they reached the burned remnants of the plains.

She sighed. “Soon enough you'll be known as Alice the Tunneler, for you spend so much time underground, or Alice the Traveler, for you've walked all over creation and back and still have far to go.”

Very far to your little cottage and your fair green field,
she thought, and walked.

Alice walked, and walked. When she was tired she rested, and when she was hungry she ate. Without the sun she had no sense of the passage of time. When it seemed she had walked a very long way, she came to a large room.

That is, she thought she arrived at it but it really appeared out of nowhere, like it hadn't been there a moment before and popped in especially for her.

Which was entirely possible, and even probable,
Alice thought. Why should a magical tunnel that ran through a tree just be a tunnel? Especially as Alice was starting to suspect that the White Queen needed to trick her somehow, to get Alice to break some unknown rule, in order to harm her. It was the only possible explanation for why the Queen hadn't simply used her power to toss Alice off the side of the mountain.

I've simply got to be very, very careful and she won't be able to hurt me,
Alice thought, and then, as she surveyed the room,
This is not going to be easy.

Nothing ever was easy, not for her, she reflected. The room was round, but slightly uneven, like the pattern of bark around the trunk of a tree. There were four doors set approximately at
the points of a compass. Four perfectly ordinary-looking doors that Alice was quite certain were not ordinary at all.

“One leads to the White Queen,” she murmured. “And one leads to certain death.”

And the other two?
Perhaps they also led to certain death, or perhaps they all did. Then Alice thought that would not be playing fair. The White Queen did seem to at least offer the hope of a sporting chance, else there would have been no escape for Alice and Hatcher from the false village at the end of the plains.

“The best way to avoid finding out what's behind the bad doors is to go through the right one the first time,” Alice said.

She stared at each one in turn, hoping to gather some useful hint.

Each door was made of heavy dark wood and polished to a high gloss. Alice wondered who came to polish the doors every day.

The floor and walls were black and white tiles laid out like a chessboard, and looking at them for too long made Alice dizzy. She closed her eyes so she would not get sick.

Did the children of the village go through these doors? If so, Alice imagined that they must be led directly to the correct one.

“You're delaying,” Alice said to herself. “And being quite foolish about it too.”

If she was honest, Alice would admit that she was terrified that she would open one of the doors and find the goblin standing there, waiting to close his arms around her and pull her away into darkness.

Stop dithering.
She half expected it to be Cheshire's voice, but it was her own. There was an empty place where Cheshire had been, as if he'd only been able to go to the entry of the room and no farther.

Alice didn't know if she was pleased about this or not. It was lonely to be here in this strange place and Cheshire was at least a kind of company.

“Just choose,” Alice said, and the words echoed in the small space.

Choose, choose, choose.

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,
Alice thought. She closed her eyes and spun in a circle. When she opened them again the tunnel that had led her to the room was gone, and all that remained were the four doors.

“Very well,” she said, and pulled open the door in front of her.

She stood in the doorway for a moment, bewildered. The room looked like an exact copy of the room she presently stood in. The polished doors, the black-and-white checkerboard, everything was precisely the same.

Alice glanced over her shoulder to make sure she hadn't somehow ended up back in the tunnel where she'd started. She hesitated, uncertain if she should continue through and try a door in the next room, or if she should step back and give this room another go.

Before she could decide, something shoved her directly between her shoulders, like a great gust of wind or a giant hand. Alice stumbled into the room, falling to her face.

“Are you all right, miss?” a voice asked.

Alice raised her head, and blinked. She was not in the round room with all the doors. The sun was shining very brightly overhead and someone was leaning over her, a male someone who was just a dark silhouette against the blue, blue sky. Beneath her was soft green grass and the smell of earth.

The man held out his hand and Alice let him help her to her feet. She was several inches taller than the man, who had a round brown hat and a bushy grey mustache and very kind blue eyes. She dusted the dirt from her skirts and readjusted her white kid gloves. There was a green stain on the left one, and she thought vaguely that Mother would be annoyed when she saw that.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, unable to keep the confusion out of her voice. “I'm not certain what happened.”

“Boys,” the man said grimly as he stooped to pick up Alice's dropped parasol. “They're only having fun, to be sure, but they run through these crowds with no regard for the rest of us. Can I help you to a bench, miss?”

“No,” Alice said, looking around her, still unsure. She seemed to have forgotten where she was and where she was going, but she didn't want this nice man to know that. “I'm . . . waiting for someone. Thank you very kindly, sir, for your assistance.”

“Good day, miss,” the man said, lifting his hat, and he continued on his way, leaving Alice in a bewildered puddle.

All about her were well-dressed folk walking arm in arm, laughing and talking. Children ran in small mad mobs, giggling wildly, faces covered in the remnants of flavored ices. Music
from a carousel drifted in the air, as did the smell of smoke and grilled meat from a food cart.

Alice wore a beautiful white day dress with satin ribbons on the skirt and sleeves. Her hat had been knocked askew in the fall and she straightened it as she looked about. She was in an open park, there was some kind of party or festival or fair occurring, and she had no notion what she was doing there. She was supposed to meet someone, she felt sure, but she wasn't certain who.

Well,
she thought,
I'll just wait on that bench over there until I remember.

There was a bench tucked between two large lilac bushes and she wandered in that general direction, hoping her memory would return.

She paused when a familiar voice called her name. “Alice! Alice!”

She turned, and a tall handsome man with grey eyes pushed through the crowd toward her.

“Nicholas!” she called, hurrying to meet him.

Part of her knew it was very wicked to meet like this without a chaperone, but Dor had gone off with her own man, winking at Alice as she went.

That's right,
Alice thought, trying to make sense of the jumble in her head. Her mother had given Alice permission to go on an outing with Dor, not knowing the girls intended to meet their young men while they were out.
Not that Hatcher is exactly young,
Alice thought, noting the flecks of grey in his dark hair.

Then everything in her seemed to stutter to a halt.
Hatcher? Why did I think of him as Hatcher?

“Alice? Are you in there?” Nicholas rapped his knuckles on the side of her head, very gently, and grinned.

She shook away the strange thought and smiled at him. “Some boys knocked me down while they were playing. It seems my brains have gotten rattled a bit.”

“Are you hurt?” he asked. His eyes inspected her all over, in a way that was just concerned about her well-being but made Alice flush all the same.

“Of course not,” Alice said, and smiled, and slid her arm into his. She always liked being close to him, so that she could smell his shaving soap and the wool of his coat and the cigars he sometimes smoked.

“Let me get you a lemonade,” he said.

“I'm quite fine,” Alice protested. “There's no need to make a fuss.”

“Well, perhaps I would like a lemonade. Did you ever consider that?” Nicholas asked.

Alice laughed at this, for she had never seen Nicholas drink anything tamer than wine at her father's table. She sighed, resting her head on his shoulder, thinking it was a lovely miracle that she had met Nicholas at that garden party. They had laughed and talked and danced all the afternoon, while her parents smiled approvingly. He had asked her father for permission to court, and her father agreed, for Nicholas had just been named a junior partner in his firm and his prospects were excellent.

Of course, they were not, strictly speaking, supposed to meet on their own even if they were courting but Alice was certain Nicholas would ask her father permission to wed any day now.
So really it is quite all right,
Alice thought. They were nearly betrothed, and in the meantime it was just a little bit thrilling to be so naughty.

Nicholas gently disengaged his arm so he could buy a cup of lemonade from a cart. Alice fanned her face with her hand. The sun seemed suddenly unrelenting (
like the burned plains
) and she was very hot.

What plains?
she thought, and then there was a strange sensation in her fingertips, like she was running her hand through silky ash.